Thailand surrogacy: Australian couple caught in crackdown break their silence

Bangkok: An Australian same-sex couple caught up in a crackdown on surrogacy in the Thai capital have broken their silence, saying many Australian parents unable to bring their surrogate-born babies home are distraught and have run out of money.

Steve and James, the biological parents of a three-week-old boy they have called Rhyley, say 20 Australian couples they know who are holed up in Bangkok hotels are having issues with their babies because they are so distressed.

“This is very emotionally draining. We had a meeting and I told them not to be stressed, to enjoy the fact they have their babies,” said Steve, 46, from Melbourne.

“But they are not enjoying their time with their babies … this should be a special time of bonding but it has been, I would not say destroyed, but tainted by the situation in Thailand,” he says. “When you are stressed your baby becomes stressed. The babies are getting upset, they are crying constantly ... people are carrying on as if the sky has fallen in but they shouldn’t as this is something that is out of their control.”

Like an estimated 200 other Australian couples, Steve and James, 47, face an agonising wait to find out whether they will be able to take their babies home, after Thai authorities cracked down on surrogacy following the baby Gammy scandal.

They say they are remaining positive despite “confusion and frustration” and plan to attempt to leave Thailand in early September as they had originally planned.

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“What have we got to lose if we try and are turned back?” Steve says.

At least three Australian couples and their babies have been turned back from the airport in recent days, but one same-sex couple was allowed to fly out with their baby to Singapore.

Thai authorities have declared that foreign biological parents must obtain a court order before being able to depart through immigration channels, a process fraught with difficulty that is expected to take months.

The number of babies with Australian biological parents who are caught up in the drama in Bangkok could be as high as 300 because many of the couples have entered into arrangements to have twins.

In a Facebook message Steve and James, who do not want their surnames published, said “even though this situation is beyond our control and despite rumours of being arrested for human trafficking, having our baby returned to his birth mother or being placed in a Thai orphanage, we remain positive and hope to be home soon”.

James says many Australians who have pregnancies under way have not been able to contact their surrogates because of raids on clinics, including All IVF, the most popular clinic for Australians, which has been forced to close.

“It’s easy for us to say because our boy has been born but these parents should take a deep breath, relax – the pregnancies will progress and once everything is done, dusted and settled they will be able to renew their contact,” he says.

Holding Aleisha, the couple’s two-year-old daughter who was born to a surrogate mother in India, James says he and Steve are proud parents a second time.

“Who do you love?” he asks Aleisha.

“Daddy and daddy,” she says.

Rhyley was born to a 30-year-old surrogate mother of two other children on July 31 at Bangkok Nursing Hospital, the day after Thai authorities decided to crackdown on the country’s booming surrogacy industry.

Steve says the surrogate asked to see the baby after the birth.

“She cried and touched my heart. It was raw emotion. She said ‘I am happy if you are happy',” he says.

“That was when we knew it was a business arrangement for her. She was happy to do it for us and had no intention of taking the baby from us … so from that moment we wanted her to see the baby, to feed the baby and hold the baby.”

Rhyley and Aleisha were born from the same egg donor, a 30-year-old Australian who flew to Bangkok after the birth to see the baby.

Steve and James each fathered one of the children.

James says if they cannot take Rhyley home for months Steve will stay in Bangkok and find a cheap hotel while he returns to work in Melbourne. The couple have already taken out additional loans to pay the tens of thousands of dollars for the surrogacy but say many of the other Australian couples are in dire financial strife. Some of them face losing their jobs unless they return to work soon.

“They are sacrificing everything for children they cannot have in Australia,” James says. “They thought they were going to be here five or six weeks now there are rumours they will have to stay three months or six months, or who knows how long,” he says.

Steve adds: “Their credit cards are maxed out. They have refinanced their homes. They have taken out personal loans.”

James says couples are being told different things and they do not know who to believe but are hoping Thailand’s military rulers will allow a moratorium for those with existing surrogacy agreements before laws are passed that will effectively ban commercial surrogacy in Thailand, except involving relatives.

“That would be a very compassionate thing for the Thai government to do and would be a real show of faith that surrogacy has a place in the world,” he says.